


enoptromancy

by SashaSea (SHCombatalade)



Series: mirror, mirror [2]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-07
Updated: 2016-11-07
Packaged: 2018-08-29 17:56:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8499610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SHCombatalade/pseuds/SashaSea
Summary: Nathaniel looks in the mirror for the first time in nine years, and he doesn’t recognize who looks back.





	

Nathaniel looks in the mirror for the first time in nine years, and he doesn’t recognize who looks back.

It’s a stranger.

A stranger with his eyes and his nose and his cheekbones - under the blood and the burns - and his chapped, half-chewed lips. A stranger who stares back, matching expression of revulsion, of pain, of horror. A stranger who raises hands bandaged into useless clubs to push back the hair from his forehead, leaning in for a closer look. A stranger who looks and moves exactly like him, but a stranger nevertheless.

He doesn’t recognize who looks back, because it’s the first time in nine years he’s looked and he hasn’t seen Neil Josten.

“I want to see my team,” Nathaniel tells the agents, but the words catch in his throat like he knows they’re a lie - they are his, but he is not theirs. They want Neil.

(Nathaniel wants Neil too. Neil’s always been stronger than him, been braver. Nathaniel is the one who knows how to survive, but Neil is the one who _lives_.)

The agents blink in unison. They shake their heads no in unison. They cross their arms in unison.

Nathaniel is used to fighting mirror images. Eventually, they give in in unison as well.

* * *

At the hotel, he digs his heels into the bottom step and refuses to move. “No,” he tells them, shoving backwards into whichever of the agents thought he could be herded. “First floor,” he snarls, “bring them to me.”

It doesn’t matter in the end, because they swarm into the room in a cluster of eight ( _one at a time_ , the agents warn them, and no one listens) and the one he’s looking for isn’t there. “Where’s-” Nathaniel asks, and he turns to Aaron because his is the face most recognized; Aaron whines to see the damage. “Aaron, where’s-”

The answer is a clatter of metal and violence against the door, and Wymack snarling to _wait, damn it, wait-_

The door opens and Andrew wrestles with the agents, with his wheelchair, with every emotion he refuses passage across his face; he wrestles all of it and leaves it behind, dropping to sit in front of Nathaniel. It’s the first time they’ve met without a mirror between them, but Nathaniel thinks that not much has changed - whatever barrier has been built between them is cold as glass and as painful to shatter.

“Andrew,” he can’t look him in the eye, not to look and see only Nathaniel reflected back. “I’m sorry-” 

He’s sorry for a lot, but mostly for Neil.

A sharp intake of breath and the change that takes over Andrew is obvious; the anger vanishes, but so does anything that made him look halfway human. He is a blank slate again. “Nathaniel.” Andrew has been fully awake for seventy-nine days now and out of the hospital for sixty-four of them, but this is the first time he’s looked like his previous prognosis (Minimal consciousness, they called it. Basic brain function, but nothing voluntary. A working body, but no one inside it.)

A human, but not a person.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, and wishes he knew how to change it.

* * *

“Can I really do it,” he asks later, keeping his gaze on the play of white and red across his knuckles and safe from the glint of reflection in the window behind him. “Can I really be Neil again?”

“I told Neil to stay,” Andrew growls. “Leave Nathaniel buried in Baltimore with his father.”

* * *

Nathaniel Wesninski writes his life story down for the FBI. Neil Josten signs his name on every sheet of paper.

“Oh.” The words are meant as casual, easy, but they echo in the relative emptiness of the hospital bathroom like whispers in a church. Tugging the sweatshirt down over his bandages feels like being sliced open a second time, but he welcomes the pain. Pain is how Neil knows he’s alive. “That’s me.”

The agent coughs into the sleeve of his jacket and makes a face like he wants to apologize, but doesn’t have the ability to do so. He’s the older of the two, a father’s age, and the lines at the corners of his eyes draw up and try to shy away when he catches sight of Neil. “It looks bad,” he says, rethinks it, “maybe surgery,” and it’s no better. “You’re alive,” he finally pronounces, like that has to be enough.

It’s enough.

“That’s _me_ ,” Neil says again, and pulls at the hood of the sweatshirt for better lighting; in the mirror, the fresh stitches and bandages pull with the motion and he watches a butterfly of blood flap across one knuckle. He clenches his fist and both of them, his and his reflection’s, go almost white from the strain of it.

The face in the mirror has Nathaniel’s eyes and hair and nose and cheekbones, but everything else, the good and the bad, is Neil’s.

A sharp kick at his ankle and he drags his stare away from the mirror and down to meet Andrew’s. “That’s you,” he agrees, and the smile doesn’t reach his face but it does his voice. “You look like shit.”

“Yeah,” Neil grins, “I do.”


End file.
